


let our walls cave in

by BerryliciousCheerio



Category: Runaways (Comics), Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Slow Burn, actually can it be counted as accidental if its willed so, friends to acquaintances to emergency support system to friends to lovers, happy season 3 eve!, i play fast and loose with which canon i'm pulling from, it's the life as we know it au that literally nobody asked for, nico's got some stuff to work through!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21774583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BerryliciousCheerio/pseuds/BerryliciousCheerio
Summary: “Ms. Minoru, there’s been an accident.”or: meet nico minoru, sudden guardian to her sister's orphaned child and still stumbling towards something that feels like home.
Relationships: Chase Stein/Gertrude Yorkes, Karolina Dean/Nico Minoru, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Molly Hayes | Molly Hernandez/Klara Prast
Comments: 34
Kudos: 278





	1. thread by thread, i come apart

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO FRIENDS
> 
> happy season three eve! i've been toiling away at this au for Months and it's finally time to drop the first chapter. i'm very excited about it because this'll be the first time i've undertaken a multi-chap project in quite some time, and it will also be the last fic i post while still in undergrad (!) 
> 
> this is very much my baby (heh), and you can absolutely tell i watched life as we know it........Too Many times. also slow burn! friends to enemies to acquaintances to emergency support system to friends to lovers! nico addressing feelings of loss and abandonment and jealousy as adulthood comes barreling down on her abruptly! a very adorable baby! let's fuckin' goooooooooo!
> 
> cw: car wreck (off screen), character death (off screen), hospitals
> 
> disclaimed

Nico doesn’t walk in her front door until a little after four and she thanks her lucky stars that it’s the summer and there’s the faintest hint of light streaming in through her windows, because she definitely forgot to leave any lights on for herself. 

Which is _stupid_ , because it’s four in the morning and Nico reeks of shitty tequila and the _worst_ part of that sentence is that she isn’t even drunk. Rather, the club had a bachelorette _and_ a bachelor party cycle through and _both_ had encompassed several sloppy drunks, one of whom leaned a little further over the bar than was strictly necessary and spilled the entirety of his drink on Nico.

She’s pretty sure it had been on purpose. And honestly, what’s even worse is that the fucker hadn’t even had the courtesy to tip well.

Nico just wants to go to bed, at this point – she’s been on her feet for what’s nearing twelve hours straight, if you include the walk back to her apartment because she forgot to call a car before she locked up, and her back is starting to ache a little. More than a little, really. Enough so that she’s grumbling to herself half-heartedly as she feels for the wall and stumbles towards her room.

There’s not far to stumble; her apartment is small and barely more than a studio, considering the fact that her bedroom door fell off its hinges hardly a month after she’d moved in. Sometime between then and now she’d crammed a shitty couch, a couple bean bag chairs, and the coffee table she bought at Target her sophomore year into the main room and called it a living room, but it’s a living room in name only considering how she often treats it as simply an extension of her bedroom.

In the half-dark, Nico manages to navigate the small space and the occasional pile of laundry that she’s been putting off carrying down to the laundromat a block over. By the time she makes it to her bed, she’s thoroughly exhausted. 

Her jeans go and so does her bra, and she’s dimly aware that she should probably take off her makeup, but then her bed’s _right there_ and she’s in that sweet spot of dawn where she can still probably fall asleep before the sun’s rays creep through her blinds.

Nico’s asleep before her body even fully hits the mattress.

**...**

Whoever woke her up is going to die, that much Nico knows for sure when the insistent ringing of her phone drags her out of what had been an actually quite pleasant, if not memorable dream. There’d been another person in her bed, she’s pretty sure of it, and she’s pretty sure she can sink back into it if she just gets back to sleep now.

Her phone has other plans.

It vibrates loudly against the hardwood of her floor, ringtone loud and obnoxious through the fabric of her discarded jeans and Nico groans, giving up.

There’s a bit of a scramble for the phone, one that winds up with Nico half on her bed and half on the floor, thankful for once that she still lives like she had when she was twenty and newly independent and couldn’t be bothered to buy a bedframe.

The number registering on her phone’s screen is unfamiliar, but it’s an LA area code. “Hello?” she answers cautiously. 

_“Nico Minoru?”_ The woman on the other end of the line’s voice is serious. Nico gives up her fight with gravity and slides to the floor, sits up properly in response.

“Uh,” she hums, becoming more alert with every passing moment. “Yes. Who is this?”

_“Michelle Campbell, with Cedars-Sinai. We’ve been trying to contact the family of Amy Minoru.”_

Something heavy and cold settles in the pit of Nico’s stomach. “I’m her sister,” she says quietly.

_“Ms. Minoru, there’s been an accident.”_

**...**

Sometime between the end of the phone call and waiting for the Lyft, somewhere in the shuffle of getting dressed and finding her purse, Nico realizes that she’s alone. 

And it’s – that’s not a new thing, not really. But it’s not often that she _resents_ it or wishes it were any different. She’d made good with being alone in college when she was the only Pride kid to leave the state, but as she stands in the dimly lit lobby, arms crossed against her chest to try and quell the way her hands are shaking, Nico realizes she wants nothing more than a hug. Someone’s hand on her shoulder. Someone to lean into as the weight of what she’s about to face hits her.

She doesn’t really see any of them regularly anymore – the last time was probably at Molly’s graduation, which is fucked up considering how close they all live. But adulthood is weird, made weirder still by being effectively disowned by her mother after switching programs before eventually dropping out, and time does wonders at eating away at childhood friendships.

Still. There aren’t any others that Nico would rather have with her.

There’s an old group chat that Nico hasn’t deleted, despite it having been silent for the better part of a year. Nico’s pretty sure Molly named it ages ago – _GRADUATION BIIIIIIITCH_ – and she chokes back a sob. Christ – how do you write a text message like this?

Nico types one out, then deletes it. Tries again. Deletes it. This isn’t something to do over text, she doesn’t think.

Her Lyft is two minutes away when she makes her decision. 

Karolina picks up on the second ring.

_“Nico?”_

It’s then that Nico remembers a few things that the fog of panic had previously hidden from her memory:

  1. It’s five thirty in the morning.
  2. She hasn’t directly spoken to Karolina in four years.
  3. She hasn’t directly spoken to Karolina in four years because the last time they interacted outside of Instagram or Facebook or through the proxy of friends, Nico told Karolina that she thought it was impulsive and stupid to get engaged so young, which had led to a fight, which had led to Karolina storming out of Nico’s house in tears, which had led to the aforementioned four years of virtual radio silence.



At the same moment, she realizes that she absolutely should have called Gert first, because Gert’s voice wouldn’t cut through said panic fog and leave Nico struggling to breathe the same way Karolina’s does. A moment after that, Nico remembers that Karolina had been her best friend once, the only person beside Amy that Nico turned to for comfort. It makes sense that she would turn to her now.

“I’m sorry it’s so early,” Nico starts, stumbling over her words. “I– there–.”

_“Nico, what the hell?”_

“There’s been an accident,” she rushes to tell Karolina, echoing the nurse’s words from earlier in the morning. “Amy, she– I’m headed to Cedars and I just–.” The Lyft pulls up outside and Nico picks herself up off the wall she’s been leaning on for support. “My mother’s out of the country and I don’t want to be alone,” she manages to finish. 

There’s a pause. Then–

_“You said Cedars?”_

The instant relief makes Nico shaky in the knees, stumbling as she takes the few steps that lead from the lobby of her building to the street. “Yeah,” she confirms quietly. “Cedars.”

_“I’ll call the others?”_

“If you could.”

 _“Okay.”_ There’s another moment of silence, heavy enough to outweigh the prickle of embarrassment Nico would be feeling otherwise. _“I’ll meet you there_.”

The call disconnects. The car pulls away from the curb.

**...**

It takes twenty-six minutes to get to the hospital – Nico’s sure, because she counts the seconds to distract herself, staring out at the city waking up around her. If her driver is trying to make conversation, she doesn’t hear him. It’s just barely six when the car pulls up along the curb of the ER; she’s running off little more than an hour of sleep and it must show, because at least two orderlies shoot concerned looks in her direction as she staggers through the doors.

It’s early yet, and the ER is quiet. Little miracles.

The woman behind the desk looks up as Nico approaches, says something that sounds like it’s coming from underwater – or it’s Nico that’s underwater, maybe.

“Um,” Nico manages. “I’m looking for my sister?”

The woman’s eyebrows lift and, yeah, _sister_ doesn’t quite cut it for identification. 

“Amy Minoru,” Nico clarifies.

“And that’s –?”

“M-i-n-o-r-u.”

The woman’s acrylics tap lightly against the keyboard as she searches the name, her head dropping almost imperceptibly before she looks up at Nico again. “You’ll be headed to the ICU – if you take the elevators up, someone will be out to meet you.” She points out the elevators just out of sight of the entrance before she drops her eyes again, conversation effectively ended.

Maybe that’s for the best. Nico doesn’t think she can quite handle summoning answers to any further questions.

As she waits for the elevator, she tries to minimize the situation, to manage the panic that’s starting to rise within her. _Of course_ the hospital would call her – she’s been Amy’s emergency contact for a couple of years now, just as Amy’s been hers. _Of course_ Amy would be in the ICU – she’s been in a car accident; car accidents warrant the ICU, cause the types of injuries that may require intensive care. _Of course_ Amy’s going to be fine – Amy wouldn’t leave Ellie alone. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.

At the same moment that the elevator arrives, the doors to the ER slide open again and, out of the corner of her eye, Nico recognizes the group that spills in

Gert’s leading the charge, purple hair vibrant as ever, but it’s Karolina that Nico’s eyes are drawn to first. She looks away again just as quickly, squeezing her eyes shut to ignore the visceral wave of sadness and regret that pulses through her. 

Over the thundering rush of blood in her ears, Nico hears the elevator doors close. Catches snippets of conversation from her friends (is she even allowed to call them that anymore?).

When Nico opens her eyes, the fluorescent lights are blinding and she blinks fast, blaming the ever-growing stinging of tears on that fact alone. She takes a few steps back towards the entry and says in a quiet voice, “Hey guys.”

She’s not entirely sure what she was expecting – awkward handshakes? Uncomfortable eye contact? How do you greet the friends that you haven’t seen for nearly two years, but that showed up the moment you called for them? 

It doesn’t matter, really. Molly takes all expectations off the table when she immediately breaks away from the group with a shout of “Nico!” as she pulls her into the tightest hug Nico’s experienced since – well. Since the last time she saw Molly.

“Have you seen Amy yet? You look like you haven’t slept, have you been here the whole time or – ?”

Gert cuts off Molly’s rambling questions, hissing her name and pulling at her arm to loosen her grip on Nico a bit, giving her just enough room to catch her breath and let her train of thought catch up.

“I just got here,” Nico answers eventually, after she realizes that there are more than just Molly’s eyes on her, waiting expectantly, patiently. “She’s – uh. I’m –.” 

It’s getting harder to find words to answer these things, these necessary questions, getting harder to keep her mind from straying to how this went down when they were younger, how it felt trying to swim through the wake of her father’s death to make it back to shore, to these people. Nico swallows hard as Molly lets her go completely, looking up just in time to catch Karolina’s gaze for a brief second before the other woman looks away.

Right. Focus.

Nico shoves the rising panic into a box and buries it deeper than she’s ever buried anything before, all so that she can summon the clarity to say, “She’s in the ICU. I was actually just about to head up.”

She nods once to punctuate the statement, avoiding eye contact – she’s sure that Chase is doing that puppy eyed thing he always did when he worried, equally sure that Alex is looking at her like he half-expects her to fall apart at the seams and she doesn’t _want_ this, she doesn’t. Nico’s not sure exactly what it is that she does want from them, but it’s not their concern.

 _It’s for Amy,_ she tells herself as the group reorients, heading back the way she came, back towards the elevators.

It’s harder to tell herself that when Gert falls into step beside her, moving a little slower as the rest pull away. “I’m glad you called,” Gert says with a gentle nudge of her elbow. “We all are.”

The lump in Nico’s throat, there since the moment _accident_ was first uttered in the early morning light, threatens to choke her.

It shouldn’t be a tight fit in the elevator, but it feels like one anyway, with Nico all too aware of Gert beside her, their shoulders brushing. Molly ahead of her, sneaking concerned looks over her shoulder. Alex, by the button panel, staring resolutely at the display as the floor numbers creep up. Chase leaning on the wall beside Gert, studying Nico without shame. 

And Karolina. 

Karolina who has, by the universe’s cruel machinations, ended up on Nico’s other side and is studiously avoiding eye contact, elbows tucked in close against her sides.

Nico’s deciding whether it would be worth it to try and say something to her – to thank her, maybe – when the elevator stops and the doors open. There’s someone in scrubs waiting at the entrance to the ICU; he looks up from the chart in in his hands when they all pile out on the floor.

“Are you the, uh –,” he glances down once more, “family of Amy Minoru?”

Alex shifts aside. Nico drifts forward to fill the space he’d once occupied at the front of the group. “I’m her sister,” she says.

The man – _Jason, R.N._ his ID card reads – nods. “And you all are…?” he asks, directing his question towards the rest of the group. 

And Nico remembers this from her dad. How the ICU had strict rules – only family, no friends, not even when Dale and Stacy had come through to collect Nico and Amy because their mother wouldn’t leave his bedside. They’d had to wait outside the doors for the girls to be escorted out by a nurse.

Nico can’t imagine being at Amy’s bedside alone. Or, worse, sitting beside her mother, whenever she arrives.

“They’re family,” she says quickly. Too quickly, if the nurse’s raised eyebrows are anything to go by. Nico sets her jaw. Crosses her arms in defiance. If he fights her on this, at least then she’ll have somewhere to direct the frantic energy buzzing through her. 

Jason nods again. “Follow me.”

Nico wants to look over her shoulder, wants to see her friends’ faces, wants them to tell her that everything will be okay. She _wants_ , which is startling. It’s been a long time since she’s wanted anything she couldn’t provide for herself.

She also doesn’t know how to _ask_ for what she wants anymore. 

Her hesitation must be obvious, because then – then Karolina’s there beside her, hand coming to rest gently on Nico’s shoulder as she slips in beside Alex. There’s pressure, a squeeze. It’s enough to spur Nico onward.

Jason leads them down the main corridor, passing the front nurse’s station. Nico keeps bracing for the inevitable loss of contact, keeps waiting for Karolina to pull away from her – and really, Nico wouldn’t blame her if she did – but it never comes. Even as Jason pulls up alongside a room with frosted glass, even as he opens the door and gestures for them to enter the small waiting room. It’s not until Nico heads towards a seat that Karolina drops her hand, but even then she still follows Nico across the room to the seat beside hers. 

It’s been a while since they’ve talked, but even longer still since they’ve been in such close proximity. It should worry Nico how easily they slide back into this, should rattle the cage that she’s locked up her emotions in, should send the guilt she’s tried to suppress over the years rolling towards the surface.

It doesn’t, at least not right now. Karolina’s arm brushes hers as she settles into her own seat, warm against Nico’s skin through the thin fabric of Karolina’s cardigan. 

Molly takes up post on Nico’s other side, reaching out for and sandwiching Nico’s hand between both of her own and Nico looks over at her gratefully, unable to articulate exactly how much she loves the girl sitting next to her, how sorry she is for her admittedly lackluster response to Molly’s regular texts and direct messages.

Jason leaves them with a soft, “The doctor will be in shortly,” and pulls the door closed behind him.

“Does anyone want anything from the vending machine?” Gert asks, pulling out her debit card from the slot in her phone case as she heads back towards the door, Chase close behind her. “Nico?”

She tries to answer. She does, but it comes out half-strangled with the emotion rising up her throat at the sight of them, all of them. She’s been a pretty shitty friend – actually, with as long as it’s been since she’s initiated contact or responded with more than single line replies to any of them, she’s not even sure if she could classify as a friend to them these last few years. But they’re still here. They still came. They’re still wrapping her up in the very center of their circle and caring for her and Nico feels fourteen again, fourteen and hurting and _terrified_.

If Amy were here with her, it would feel just like old times.

“Water would be good,” Karolina answers in her place. She still hasn’t looked over at Nico yet. “And a coffee for Nico.”

Like Nico said – just like old times.

Alex is fiddling with the television remote he found on one of the side tables between a couple chairs against the wall. When he gets the TV on, he turns around. “Any preferences?” he asks as Gert and Chase slip out of the room, their hushed voices fading as they head down the hall. “Our options are daytime TV or reruns.”

Nico nods, which she realizes a beat later isn’t how to answer Alex’s question. It’s more than she managed for Gert, at least. She still looks up at him despairingly. _Don’t make me make decisions_ , she pleads silently.

She thinks he understands, from the way his posture straightens a little and he turns resolutely back to the television, flicking through channels with a practiced and tightly held ease until he lands on reruns of _That 70’s Show_. “Good?” he asks, mostly directing his question towards Molly and Karolina.

There are quiet murmurs of assent. Molly’s phone keeps buzzing and she pulls her hand away from Nico with a pained apology, one that Nico waves off. 

“I’m fine,” she manages, if only to wipe the look of guilt off of Molly’s face. “ _Seriously_ , Molly,” she says a beat later when Molly still hasn’t made a move to actually deal with whatever it is that’s setting her phone off, her hand sort of hovering just near Nico’s own, like she’s half-thinking of ignoring the device.

This time it sticks. Molly nods quickly, her curls bouncing out of the disheveled braid they’d been in when she arrived. Then she’s up and out of her seat, phone to her ear as she heads towards the back of the room for some semblance of privacy. Before her voice grows too quiet, Nico catches her murmuring, “Hey Klara,” as she moves away.

“Who – ?”

“Molly’s girlfriend,” Karolina supplies before Nico can finish her question. When Nico looks back over, Karolina’s eyes are still glued to the screen ahead of them.

“Molly has a girlfriend?” Maybe Nico should be a little bit better at texting back.

Karolina hums a confirmation. “They met at freshmen orientation.”

Nico glances back over her shoulder at where Molly’s curled up in the back-corner chair, knees drawn up to her chest. “That’s adorable,” she says quietly. Molly’s serious expression breaks for a moment, softening as she huffs out a laugh and – yeah. Adorable. Nico’s so supremely happy for her, she really is, and she tries to hang on to the first moment of genuine happiness she’s felt since _whenever_ when the door to the room they’re in opens again.

Gert and Chase slip into the room just ahead of the doctor and Jason that follow them, Gert’s face pale and drawn as she avoids Nico’s gaze. Chase, his eyebrows pulled together heavily over those goddamn puppy eyes, can’t seem to look away.

The whole room seems to go still. 

“Ms. Minoru?” the doctor says and, through her rapidly dwindling tunnel vision, Nico can see how the room rearranges – it’s a goddamn Renaissance painting with her painted as Christ on the cross. Nico’s never hated the world more.

The doctor unbuttons her lab coat and sits in the seat across from Nico, Jason following suit. “I’m Dr. Aguilar. I’ve been heading up your sister’s care team,” she tells her. “I am so sorry, but I have bad news.”


	2. pitch black, pale blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> here nico is: alone again and feeling very young

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: death (off screen), car wreck (off screen), hospitals, child injury

Nico’s not sure what time it is anymore or whether the sun is still up or if Saturday has slipped into Sunday yet. She’s not sure if she actually sent her manager a text to call out for the weekend or if she just typed it out. She’s not sure if she’s eaten or even if the coffee Gert brought back for her has gone cold yet.

What she is sure of is this: Amy is dead. Amy died. Amy suffered catastrophic internal hemorrhaging following a front-end collision with an intoxicated driver sometime before ten the night before and the medical team, though they tried, could do nothing to save her. Dr. Aguilar broke the news and then asked in a very calm, sympathetic voice if Nico wanted to know the details or not.

It felt like a stupid question – who would want to know the details of how their sister died? Who would want to know that she’d been here alone, suffering, while they were working or walking home or sleeping twenty-six minutes away?

Nico had, apparently, even if she doesn’t remember asking.

Ellie is in the PICU, Nico remembers being told that at least. She’d been strapped into the Cadillac of a car seat that Amy was gifted at her baby shower and made it out with only some bruising on her ribs, a fractured leg, and a concussion – the last time Nico had seen her niece, she was a few months old and it’s _hard_. It’s hard to reconcile words like _fracture_ and _concussion_ with a baby that had screamed the second Amy placed her in Nico’s arms and calmed the moment she’d returned to her mother.

It’s even harder to reconcile the word _orphan_.

The TV is still playing reruns of _That 70’s Show_ and Nico’s staring blankly at it, trying to force herself to focus on the words and colors and movement on the screen. It’s easier than thinking. Easier than letting her mind wander to what comes next.

Because that’s the rub: Nico has no fucking clue what comes next. 

Karolina’s arms are still around her, which would be mind-boggling enough if Nico weren’t so shell-shocked. She doesn’t have a very clear picture of what happened after Dr. Aguilar told them the news; she only really remembers the searing pain of loss ripping through what she’d once, perhaps naively, assumed were old wounds. 

There’s a hazy memory of collapsing in on herself and the slip-slide of her jeans against the smooth seat of her chair, the swooping feeling in her stomach as she pitched forward and Chase shouting – _shit, Nico_ – while Molly darted into her periphery in a blur of pink as the floor rose swiftly to meet her face. And then the sudden steadiness of someone catching her and hauling her back up into her seat, the warmth and realness of the arms around her.

Karolina had been crying by then, Nico thinks, remembering the damp warmth of the hollow of her neck when Nico allowed herself to be pulled closer, to rest against her fully.

Nico hadn’t cried – only let out this god-awful moan right at the very start, wordless and grief stricken – and she still hasn’t shed tears. She doesn’t think she can, not when it feels as though the communal quota for tears has been more than filled between the other five people in the room. 

Among the sniffles and hiccups and the continual sound of Kleenex being pulled from the many boxes littered around the room, Nico is all too aware of her own numbness. She thinks she might be broken. She thinks that maybe she’s been broken for a very long time.

The door creaks open again and Nico looks up slowly, expecting another nurse coming to ask if anyone wanted a magazine or something to drink or for someone else to be called. This time though, it’s not anyone in scrubs, but an older woman in a pantsuit with a file in her hands. 

“I’m looking for Nico Minoru,” she says, stepping in and closing the door behind her. Nico has to give her credit for not just assuming after giving the room a quick glance.

Nico listlessly raises her head from Karolina’s shoulder, straightening her posture minutely. “Yeah?”

“I’m Jennifer Kowalski, with CDSS.” At Nico’s blank look, she adds in explanation, “Social worker.”

“Oh.”

Nico casts a cursory look around the room, finding all eyes once again on her. Jennifer Kowalski seems to notice at the same moment, asking, “Ah – I was wondering if I might speak with you privately?”

“Is it – do I –?” _Do I have to?_ Nico can’t seem to construct anything intelligible out of anything but single word answers, struggling to find the right combination of words to ask if it’s necessary, if there’s any way she can keep someone, just one person here with her. She’s so desperate not to be alone, she wants – she needs just one of them, if it can’t be all of them.

She can’t seem to force the words out and so she watches in mute grief and horror as Alex hauls himself to his feet, Gert following, then Molly and Chase behind them. Gert catches her eye and what must be a look of panic – or nothing, maybe, just blankness reflecting back at her – and she promises, “We’ll be back in a bit. Do you want something to eat?”

Nico shakes her head. Jennifer Kowalski turns her expectant gaze to Karolina.

“Oh,” Karolina breathes before turning to Nico for the first time since they came to this room. Her hold loosens, much to Nico’s displeasure, and she checks, “Yeah?”

She’s so glad she didn’t ask if she was okay, so grateful to not have to scrounge for the energy to either lie or risk folding in on herself again – not when she feels like the only thing keeping the pieces of her stuck together is the pressure of Karolina’s arms around her or the rhythmic rise and fall of her breathing. Nico nods anyway.

“Okay,” Karolina releases her entirely and stands, one hand lingering on Nico’s shoulder as she swings her gaze back to the social worker, her soft expression shifting to something akin to suspicion. “I’m just outside.”

When the door closes after her, Jennifer pulls over one of the unoccupied chairs – there are many, now that they’re alone. “I’m very sorry for your loss,” she tells her seriously, smoothing the manila folder against her knees. After a beat of silence, she continues, “I’m here to discuss the matter of Eleanor’s guardianship.”

“Ellie,” Nico corrects automatically, before Jennifer’s words catch up with her. “Wait.”

“Your sister had a will prepared when she was pregnant. Did she ever discuss it with you?”

Had she? Nico had made herself scarce after Amy got pregnant, trying to get her shit together in order to actually be more than a nuisance in her sister’s ever-expanding life. She vaguely remembers Amy mentioning meeting with a lawyer – had she mentioned it then?

“Uh – maybe,” Nico answers hollowly. “I wasn’t – um. I wasn’t around much then.”

Jennifer nods slowly before flicking open the folder. She continues, “Amy named you as her chosen guardian of Elea – Ellie. Now, I understand that this has been a day of enormous tragedy and I don’t mean to compound that, but medical decisions will need to be made for Ellie’s care and your sister believed you should be the one to make them, in the case of her death.”

The words make sense. They do. But the order that they’re put in, the meaning attached to them – that’s all going over Nico’s head.

She focuses on the through-line. Ellie. _Amy_.

“Okay,” Nico says, clinging to that anchor. “What does – I don’t know what that means exactly.”

“If you’re interested in and willing to accept responsibility for your niece’s care, we’ll need to file for temporary guardianship immediately; otherwise, because her father terminated his parental rights, her custody will automatically revert to the state until a guardian can be found for her.” 

Jennifer offers her a packet of papers, the top of the first reading _LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT_ – Nico gets that far before she has to stop reading. Flicking through them, Nico finds the prepared paperwork at the back, the places needing her initials or signature highlighted in green.

“She wouldn’t go to my mother?” Nico asks hesitantly. “If I can’t take care of her?”

“She may,” Jennifer says, slowly but not unkindly. “But that would have to wait until your mother is here to file, by which point several key medical decisions may need to have been made on Ellie’s behalf.” She pauses briefly, then adds, “We also prefer to follow the parent’s last wishes whenever possible.”

Last wishes. Amy had considered the possibility of her own death and had, apparently, decided that she wanted Nico to care for her child and that’s – Nico can’t say no. How could she?

“Okay,” Nico agrees quietly. “How do I file?”

**. . .**

When Jennifer leaves, paperwork complete and ready to be faxed to a clerk at family court, she leaves with a promise to let her know the moment a decision is made regarding guardianship.

“More than likely, the judge will approve,” she’d told Nico after walking her through the steps she would be expected to complete. “We’re also submitting a petition for permanent guardianship as well, but that decision will take longer in order for the agency to complete the appropriate review. I’ll be in touch shortly to arrange the first home visit.”

A home visit – as in, someone will be inspecting her home to see if it’s safe for Ellie. As in, Nico needs to get a better place to live ASAP.

Shit. _Shit_. There’s a large possibility that Nico hasn’t thought this through well enough, hasn’t considered the actual ramifications of agreeing to raise a child beyond the thought that Amy had _trusted_ her to.

The door barely closes behind Jennifer before its opening again, Karolina slipping back into the room in near silence. The reruns have ended, the channel showing an episode of Dr. Phil instead. 

“Hey,” Karolina murmurs, muffled by the white noise occupying most of the space between Nico’s ears.

When Nico finally drags her eyes up, meets her gaze, she can see that old look; Karolina’s right on the edge of asking something that she’s not entirely sure she _can_ ask.

There is a part of Nico – she’s not sure how big a part, really, but it’s there and it’s beating in time with her heart just as it is – that wants very little more than to ask Karolina to hold her again. And she’s feels _stupid_ , she really does, stupid that she wants to be held, stupid that she would even dream of asking that of her former friend. 

But this all feels a little too big, a little too much for the small space of Nico’s ribcage to contain – she’s Ellie’s _guardian,_ or she’s going to be. She’ll be in charge of a tiny life and she can barely keep her own life on track and her sister is _dead_ and she doesn’t know how to even consider planning for a funeral and her mother will be here soon and Karolina is _here_. Real and present because Nico asked her to be. Caring because that’s who she is. And Nico misses being cared about by Karolina. 

So really, who can blame her if her heart is hammering out a traitorous beat that sounds a lot like _please please please_?

Still –

Blamable or not, Nico knows it’s not her place to ask for Karolina’s care or warmth or worry anymore. It hasn’t been for quite some time and she knows she’s already cashed in the karmic favor of her life by calling Karolina this morning.

Nico thinks she should tell her about the guardianship; about how, in the very near future, she might hold sole responsibility for the little life that’s just down the hall, for the baby she can’t even bring herself to see right now. She thinks that she should tell her that the reason she stopped talking to her, at least at first, was that she was ashamed of herself. She thinks that she should tell Karolina that she’s sorry. That she’s not prepared to deal with any of this.

Molly bursts into the room before Nico can say anything. It’s probably better this way.

The rest of the group is close behind her and Gert presses a packaged sandwich into Nico’s hand, shaking her head sternly when Nico opens her mouth to protest. “It’s, like, two in the afternoon and I _know_ your stance on breakfast as a concept, so I highly doubt you’ve eaten anything since yesterday,” she says with a raised eyebrow.

She’s not wrong, but she’s not right either – she snacked at work, but Nico skipped dinner before her shift the night before and if she remembers correctly, brunch had been an apple and a spoonful of peanut butter because she’d forgotten to pick up groceries at the beginning of the week. So, really, the last time she ate anything substantial had been…Thursday? She thinks?

Holy shit. How is she supposed to take care of a _baby?_

“Huh?” Gert’s eyes are wide and startled, her mouth hanging. Behind her, Chase has a similar, if slightly less dramatic, look.

“What?”

“What baby, Nico?”

 _Oh shit_. She totally said it aloud.

Karolina is staring at her too, Molly as well. When Alex walks in to the silent room a few moments later, he stops when he takes in the scene. 

“What’s going on?” he asks cautiously, as if expecting more bad news.

Maybe this _is_ more bad news – Nico can’t be sure that it’s not really, not with the way that she forgot that she hasn’t eaten since _Thursday_ , not with the look of abject panic that Gert has on her face, not with the disbelief written across Karolina’s. 

“Amy named me as Ellie’s guardian,” Nico blurts out anyway, focusing on the small stain on the wall just below the television, just over Gert’s left shoulder. “I – uh, that’s what the social worker was here about. She needed me to sign some paperwork.”

“So, you’re like – you’re Ellie’s guardian now? Officially?” 

There’s something in Gert’s voice that makes Nico look back to her, something wobbly and wavering and Nico realizes that she’s not the only one surprised by the decision. Amy had kept in better touch with everyone, if the tagged posts on Instagram and Facebook were anything to go by – all of them had been at the baby shower that Nico was glaringly absent from and Nico remembers now all the times Amy had skirted around the subject of where she was going to or coming from. She’d known it then, she thinks, where Amy usually was and who she was usually with. 

She realizes belatedly that everyone in the room with her has probably spent more time with Ellie than Nico ever has. That everyone in the room with her is probably a better candidate for guardianship than Nico ever could be.

Shit.

Now that Nico’s thinking about it, she can’t stop – why would Amy have picked her? She has the least stable employment, the most debt hanging noose-like around her neck, the shittiest apartment, the most volatile dating life – everyone else was settled, had their shit together. Even Molly, apparently.

Gert and Chase were the obvious choice – they were degreed, employed, engaged; they owned their own home and drove sensible, eco-friendly sedans and were happy and stable if their Instagram posts were anything to go by and –

Nico stands abruptly, cutting off whatever Gert was in the middle of saying, the white noise in her head a little too much to hear through. Her tongue is like lead in her mouth. 

“I should go,” she hears herself say, not even bothering to try and back up her flimsy escape route. _Go where?_ the rational part of her mind asks. It is a very small part.

And it doesn’t matter, really; she just needs to not be in this room, with these people.

“Nico –,” Gert starts, not quite moving out of the way of the door, but not really stopping Nico from leaving when she slips around her. 

More voices follow her, sharp and worried, then fainter, then ceasing altogether as Nico pushes through the doors of the ICU and whips around the corner into the hallway adjacent to the elevator bank, leaning heavily against the wall. They should all know this routine by now, right? That when shit gets weird or terrible or hard, Nico bails. It should hardly be news to them or to her.

Nico stands in the hallway for a long time – she’s not sure how long exactly, because she left her purse and therefore her phone in the other room and she hasn’t worn a watch in _forever_ and she’s so tired that the clock hanging above the elevators is just a Rubik’s cube of numbers when she looks to it for answers. 

When she was a child and things were still good, Nico’s mother’s harshest criticism of her was that sometimes she could be impulsive – a little rash, a little headstrong, always hurtling headfirst into whatever it was that she was into. It had always been delivered in a fond voice, like it was almost something to be admired even when her mother would explain that impulse was good, but control was _better_.

Amy had been better – at taking their mother’s lessons to heart, at control, at knowing when to listen or talk or press forward. Amy had been better at it all.

And Nico ran blind into situations she caused. She broke hearts. She broke promises. She ran away and switched majors and screamed and cried and did whatever it was that felt right in the moment and maybe –

Maybe that’s all that this is. Maybe signing that paperwork is what felt right in the moment. Maybe this is just something that Nico will fuck up and have to add to a long list of her failures that she carefully curates, that she runs through on nights when wanting sits heavily in her chest.

But it _can’t_ be.

Maybe she could fuck up every other thing in her life – fine. Nico made peace with that a long time ago. But Ellie’s different and she _has_ to be different, because she’s so young and she has a whole life ahead of her and Nico can’t be the one that fucks her up. She can’t be.

If Nico ruins this somehow, if she ruins Ellie’s life in even half the ways that she’s already ruined her own, she’ll never forgive herself. 

She makes a decision then, straightening up off the wall. The nurse’s station is closer to the doors of the ICU than the room she was in; she can make it there without ever having to get close enough to hear or see or feel what it is she’s missing, what it is that she took upon herself to so thoroughly ruin that she’ll never properly fit back in place with them.

Eventually they’ll leave – Nico’s great at waiting people out. It’s what she did the last time.

When they leave, she can go and collect her things, start keeping her phone in her hand in order to check if she somehow missed a call, like how she’s itching to do now.

Nico’s hand is a hairsbreadth from the buzzer by the entrance of the ICU, about to buzz in for reentry, when the doors glide open. Karolina’s there – because _of course_ it’s her – and she looks startled to see Nico, her eyes going wide. “Oh,” she breathes. “Hey.”

“You can tell Gert I’m fine,” Nico says sullenly, “if that’s what you were coming to check.”

It used to go like this: Nico got her feelings hurt or she hurt someone’s feelings and couldn’t deal, so she would leave. From pizza nights at Alex’s pool house or from Timely over coffee or wherever; she’d stand and leave and go sulk somewhere set apart from the group until Karolina came looking for her or was sent out after her – it had been common knowledge that, barring Molly who was usually too young to send on diplomatic missions, Karolina was the only one that Nico wouldn’t snap at.

For a split second, Karolina’s expression hardens. It doesn’t last long, just long enough for Nico to catch the tail end of it. She used to be able to read Karolina like a book, but now Nico has no idea what that change might mean.

What she does know is that Karolina’s rearranged her features into something more neutral in the time it takes for Nico to register that there had even been a change – and that she’s got Nico’s purse and phone in her hand.

Karolina follows her gaze and seems to come back to herself, holding both items out to Nico and telling her, “Your phone rang just now. I was just bringing it out to you.”

And there it is: the stab of guilt that Nico’s come to associate with Karolina’s name, sharp and hot as it cuts through her.

“Thanks,” Nico mumbles, accepting her things back. “I’m –.” She’s _what_ , exactly? Sorry? For which part? For whose hurt?

“I’m heading to the PICU,” Nico finishes lamely after a very obvious, awkward pause.

“Yeah.” Karolina worries her bottom lip and Nico looks away. “I figured.”

There’s a lot there, hanging on Karolina’s words between them. That Karolina even thought about where Nico might be headed was more than Nico expected after everything – that she knew her well enough to anticipate where she was and where she would be going was above and beyond.

 _You’re not special_ , whispers the voice at the back of Nico’s head that sounds like some mangled version of her own – her mother’s maybe? _Any decent person would have been there already_.

The silence, already awkward, crosses into unbearable territory. Nico’s not sure how – or if – she should bridge the gap, the yawning expanse that seems to separate them. How is it that an hour ago, she’d been in Karolina’s arms? How is it that they’d so easily settled back into their old rhythms?

“I’ll go tell the others, then,” Karolina says finally, flatly. Neutrally. The neutrality is what cuts the deepest, Nico thinks.

“I – thanks.” 

She should go, now – she doesn’t need to check in with the nurse’s station for directions, not with the posted signs. It may take her longer to find the PICU, but at least then she won’t have to walk back down the hall beside her old friend, risk seeing those careful, sideways looks Karolina used to shoot her way whenever she thought Nico was right on the edge of _something_.

No matter how much she tells herself this, Nico can’t seem to bring her feet to move.

Neither can Karolina, it seems.

In a strained voice, almost too low to be entirely decipherable, Karolina rasps out, “Do you…want to be alone?”

 _No!_ Nico screams in her own head, the theoretical sound bouncing off the confines of her skull. _Absolutely not, please stay, please forgive me, please please please_ –

“I’m fine,” she says instead, pushing back the words that she’s considered and weighed and made herself sick over for years, pushing them back until they’re well-hidden beneath layers of deflection and snark and well-trained emotional absence. “I’m sure you – you all need to be getting back.”

To their lives. To people that love them.

“Nico –.”

“I’m fine!” So she sounds a little hysterical – sue her. Nico’s just had quite literally the worst fucking day she’s ever survived so far and she doesn’t have it in her to talk to or fight with _anyone,_ let alone Karolina; not right now, not today. Maybe not ever, after this.

So, she’s fine. That’s all there can be to it.

“I’m fine,” Nico repeats again a little quieter, just to hammer the point home. “I’m really – I just need to wrap my head around this.”

And it’s maybe not what she should be saying, not when she’s done something that very much warranted head-wrapping _before_ she did it, but Karolina has always had a way of pulling confessions from Nico without even trying. It’s no wonder that Nico’s halfway to spilling her guts out on the floor between them. She’s always been a little weak for Karolina; time and distance did little to change that.

Karolina’s quiet, studying her, and Nico feels herself shrink under her scrutiny. And then –

“Do you need anything from home?” she asks, crossing her arms in front of herself. Nico tries not to watch as her biceps flex. “You’ll probably be here a while, right?”

“I – oh.” Nico really would like to not be in jeans anymore and she knows exactly where her softest leggings are, but – “You don’t need to do that.”

“I know.”

There’s the barest hint of an edge to Karolina’s voice, the tiniest slip of frustration, like she’s being so _clear_ and Nico’s just not understanding and –

and Nico doesn’t know what to do anymore. Doesn’t know how to _be_ around Karolina anymore. Doesn’t really have anything to go off of besides years-old memories and a whole shared childhood of learned behavior and the bone-deep instinct to bend herself to whatever direction Karolina asks of her.

“Okay,” Nico murmurs finally, giving in and pretending like her heart doesn’t constrict at the look of muted surprise that crosses over Karolina’s face in a flash. “There’s a pair of leggings on the back of my couch – and, um, headphones? I think they’re on the kitchen counter. They’re black with, like, skulls on them.” She can’t really bring herself to meet Karolina’s eyes, so she turns her attention to finding her keys in her bag.

“Text me the address?” Karolina asks, accepting Nico’s house keys when she finally finds them.

Nico nods. “Thank you,” she tacks on when Karolina turns to leave. 

“You should head over,” Karolina tells her, offering this half-smile that’s almost painful to look at. “Before Gert decides I’m taking too long.”

“Yeah – I’m, um. Just text or something? When you’re back.”

“Of course.”

Nico can’t trust her own voice anymore, not with how her breath hitches just the slightest at Karolina’s soft tone, not with how her heart is beating double time as a steady thrum in the back of her head. She can’t trust that she won’t say something terrible, won’t ruin whatever it is they even still have between the two of them anymore. With a short nod, Nico turns and, after a quick glance at the sign posted by the elevators, heads towards the PICU.

**. . .**

Ellie’s so little in the crib, made even smaller by the sheer amount of wires leading from her body to an array of machines measuring and analyzing her heart rate, her oxygenation levels, her breathing rhythm, her blood pressure – a whole host of things that babies shouldn’t need worried over, Nico thinks. All things that should be taken for granted.

When Nico had first been directed to her niece’s room, she’d almost turned back around and fled the scene entirely. Because it felt _wrong_ and the wrongness was something that felt insurmountable right then, looking at Ellie’s tiny chest barely rising and falling.

“We administered some pain medication when she first arrived, but it’s likely wearing off,” the nurse had told her as she led her in, her scrubs a bright and cheery pattern of hearts and Carebears. “When it does completely, she’ll probably wake up more than a little upset – feel free to hit the call button if she seems very uncomfortable. We can give her another dose then.”

“How will I –,” Nico had started, before trailing off uselessly, feeling lost. How could she even tell if Ellie was very uncomfortable? She was a _baby_. It’s not like she could just _tell_ Nico what was wrong.

The nurse – _Zara_ , her ID badge read – had seemed to catch on quickly. “She’ll cry and pull some really angry faces and be stiff to the touch – like all her little muscles are tensed,” she had told Nico. She had turned to leave after Nico’s short nod, before turning back and adding, “And feel free to hit the call button if you need anything. The floor’s been briefed on the situation.”

That’d hit pretty hard, even if Nico appreciated the assurance.

So here Nico is: alone again and feeling very young, unsure about what she’s even supposed to be doing as she’s curled up in the chair beside Ellie’s crib. The social worker called soon after Nico had settled into Ellie’s room and confirmed what Nico had already suspected, given the circumstances – she was officially Ellie’s guardian, at least for the near future. Nico’s still not sure if she heard Jennifer correctly over the phone.

She supposes that, on paper, she’s not an altogether terrible guardian – no criminal record, a solid employment history, no late payments on her loans. She’s lived in the same place since she was twenty, has never been evicted. On paper, she’s fine. On paper, even she can understand why a judge would sign off on her.

On paper, she's fine. In person, she can hardly look at her niece now that she's noticed just how much she looks like Amy.

Her phone buzzes again in her lap, flashing Karolina’s old contact photo across the screen. Even after everything, Nico never had it in her to delete numbers or change contact information – not Karolina’s, not anyone’s.

She swipes to answer the call. “Hey,” Nico greets, still unsure about how to start any conversation with her. It had been easier, somehow, this morning; then there had been an urgency, a desperation that had driven everything. 

Now Nico’s unsure – about this, about Ellie, about where she’s going to live if she’s supposed to raise a child, about how to plan a funeral, about _if_ she’s even going to plan a funeral since her mother still hasn’t arrived to take the reins. About all of it. Nico has no answers.

_“–wasn’t sure if your building has a code or something?”_

“Huh?” Nico feels an old familiar flash of half-hearted shame at her poor listening skills – she used to be terrible at it as a kid, always picking up halfway through whatever Karolina had been telling her and forcing her to restart once her brain had finally focused in on her best friend and not on an errant curl that had escaped her braid or the way the sun made her lashes a little translucent against the rest of her summer skin. She’d been even worse as a teenager, when her own head was so loud that she could hardly hear anyone over the noise.

Karolina had never faulted her for it. Had always just laughed and said –

 _“Catch up, Neeks,”_ Karolina huffs good-naturedly before falling abruptly silent. _“Uh – anyway,”_ she says, discomfort evident in her voice. _“I just got here and was wondering if your building had a security code to get in?”_

 _As if_ Nico could afford a building with actual security and not just a shitty chain and questionable deadbolt and a baseball bat that she keeps tucked under her pillow, _just in case_.

“No code,” Nico tells her. “But the second entry sticks a little, so throw your shoulder into opening it.”

_“Got it. You just want the leggings and headphones?”_

There’s a bottle of cold brew in her fridge, leftover from the day before when Nico had decided to treat herself to something other than burnt coffee she made herself in the Mr. Coffee she bought for a dollar at Goodwill. And a warm sweatshirt on the corner of her bed that she really wishes she’d grabbed instead of the thin shirt she’d put on this morning – the hospital room isn’t all that cold she thinks, but Nico still feels chilled.

_“Nico?”_

Karolina sounds like she’s moving and then gives a little grunt of exertion – the second door into the lobby, then.

“Um –,” it’s not Nico’s fault that her mind is blank. It’s not. “There a sweatshirt in my room, on the bed. And cold brew in the door of the refrigerator. If it’s not too much trouble.”

 _“Of course not.”_ The metallic ring of her keychain being jostled. Nico only lives on the second floor and she’s not surprised that the always athletic Karolina is already at her door. _“Anything else? Books, magazines – something to do?”_

“No,” Nico tells her. “That’s it.” They could probably hang up, but Nico doesn’t want to, even if she can’t really articulate why. It’s probably the loneliness, still. Tugging her towards the voice on the other end of the line.

Karolina doesn’t seem to be rushing to hang up either. The sounds are muffled from her end, but Nico can roughly track her movements through her apartment – the rattle of loose change in the bowl that sits on the dangerously stacked boxes by the door. The groan of the weird floorboard smack in the middle of the narrow path between the column of the kitchen entry and the back of the couch. 

_“Your room is –?”_

“It’s a one bedroom,” Nico supplies, biting her lip. She’s a little ashamed now, thinking about how her life must look from her apartment’s appearance alone. The unwashed dishes. The laundry piled up. The absolute lack of anything that would even hint at her having her shit together. And, most damning: the door to her bedroom laying horizontally beneath the window in her room, covered in sticky notes reminding her to fix it at some point. _Fix your fucking door!_

Well. Too late for that now. 

“There’s no door,” she adds uselessly. 

Karolina’s definitely seen that already. Her apartment’s living room is wide open, with a clear sightline from the entry to what should have been her bedroom door. That had been part of the draw when Nico first moved in. If she came home drunk, like she was prone to doing back then, she knew it wouldn’t be all that hard to make it to bed.

Which was probably why she had never really rushed to fix the door. One less barrier between her and her bed.

Nico watches, transfixed, as Ellie shifts in her cot. She’s going to need to fix that door or, better yet, find a place that doesn’t have doors that fall off hinges. Add that to a list of requirements for a new home.

It’s growing by the second, really. Bedroom doors, front entry security, carpeting because babies turn into toddlers and hard floors and toddlers don’t mix – is Ellie crawling yet? _Shit_ , is Ellie walking? When do kids start walking?

No walk ups, then, because carrying groceries and a sleepy child won't end well. Two bedrooms at least. If she really ends up keeping Ellie, at some point she’ll probably need to look for someplace with a second bathroom – it had been hell sharing a bathroom with Amy during the summers they stayed with their grandmother. Something in an area with low violent crime rates. Something in a good school district. 

Karolina’s voice startles her out of a quickly deepening spiral.

 _“Hey, there’s a few sweatshirts on your bed,”_ she says and – _right_ , Nico threw half the pile of clothes at the foot of her bed onto the mattress when she was searching for a shirt in the morning.

Nico scrubs at her face. “Uh – the gray one. With the stars and stuff,” she instructs. “It’s probably at the bottom of the pile.”

There’s some rustling and then – _“Got it!”_

“Thanks,” she says. And then, to maybe – who knows? Make up for something, somehow? – Nico adds, “Sorry for the mess.”

Karolina’s quiet for a moment. Then, in a very hushed voice – _“It’s fine.”_

Her tone is unreadable. There’s _something_ there, something that should be familiar to Nico but that’s just not clicking, and she’s not with it enough right now to try and riddle it out. Right now, she’s fine to let Karolina stew in whatever it is she’s stewing in. It’s not her place to push Karolina for information anymore, she reminds herself, and she only has herself to blame for it.

Karolina was always better at extending her care to everyone, even those that had wronged her; it was Nico that held grudges. It was Nico that put up walls. It was Nico that backed herself into a corner and refused to find a way out.

So it’s Nico that will bite back her questions and let Karolina think whatever it is that she’s thinking, uninterrupted.

There’s some more soft sounds of movement on the phone. Ellie’s chest rises and falls; one machine beside her beeps in regular, soft intervals. And it’s weird how normal this feels – how normal the world still feels. There are nurses that pass by in the halls, their shoes lightly squeaking on the floor. There’s the hum of the dim lights above her. The soft murmur of voices that rise and fall as they slip further down the hall and then disappearing entirely into another room.

The whole world still feels aligned, despite Nico knowing that, in a very important way, it has intrinsically changed.

 _“I’m heading out,”_ the creak of her door again, the shuffle of keys turning the lock over again. _“I’ll text when I’m parking?”_

“Yeah,” Nico hums. She wants to ask to stay on the line; she wants to say that she’s afraid that if she doesn’t have something immediately in front of her, something to direct her attention to, that she’ll crack right in half. “Yeah, that’s good. I can tell the nurses to let you through.”

She thinks she can. She never really spent any time in the PICU before this – Nico has to assume that it’s at least similar in protocol to the ICU. And she has to hope that if she asks Zara nicely, she’ll look the other way for non-family to be let through.

Nico’s not entirely sure she’d even be able to pull herself from Ellie’s bedside, now that she’s here. Now that she realizes the reality of what it is that she’s doing.

 _"Alright then.”_ A breath. Another. _“I’ll see you soon?”_

“Yeah. See you soon.”

And there should be more here – this is when they’d usually end the call with a casual _I love you_ traded between them, or maybe confirmation of specific plans, or even just _goodbye_. _Goodnight_. Something else to bridge the gap.

Nico hangs up.

It’s deafeningly quiet without the soft rush of Karolina in her ear – her breathing or moving or whatever; the white noise that she produced leaves a space that Nico’s unable to fill. Ellie’s still sleeping, though less heavily than before. She starts twitching a little, her arms jerking slightly in her slumber.

Dragging the chair closer, Nico resettles with one hand slipped between the bars of the crib. She hesitates briefly – she’s never been a very physically affectionate person and that hadn’t changed with the arrival of her niece. She’s not even sure where it would be safe to touch her. Zara had promised that, as far as any of her medical team knew after hours of tests and care and observation, it was only the fracture and her head that were of concern, but Nico doesn’t feel like she can trust that or – or _anything_ , really.

She finally settles on resting her palm over Ellie’s leg, stroking the side of her tiny foot with her thumb – god, has she always been this small?

It’s a silly thought. The last time Nico had seen Ellie, she was much smaller and she knows that, keeps telling herself that. But it’s not doing much to ease the way her entire chest feels cracked open at the sight of her niece before her.

**. . .**

Nico wakes to the sound of a door creaking open and she instinctually reaches for her baseball bat, except –

 _right_.

Ellie’s machinery beep evenly and Nico straightens, feeling the ache in her neck and back from how she had slumped over in the chair, half leaning on the edge of the crib. Ellie’s still sleeping, so she couldn’t have been out that long. Besides, she hasn’t even heard from –

“I figured you missed my text,” Karolina says quietly, padding into the room and easing the door shut behind her. 

Scrubbing her face roughly in an attempt to wake up, Nico glances down to her lap for her phone, only to find it on the floor a couple paces away. “Must’ve dozed off,” she grumbles belatedly, glaring daggers at the fallen device. “How’d you get in?”

“I snuck in,” Karolina admits sheepishly, the pink of her cheeks apparent even in the dim lighting when Nico glances up at her in surprise. She shrugs and slips around to Nico’s side and sets the bag she’s carrying beside Nico’s seat. “I figured you wouldn’t want to leave her,” she tacks on, glancing at Ellie.

“I – thanks.” 

And Nico _means_ the words, she does, but she knows that the spike of _something_ that she feels hot and sharp in her chest must color her words somehow, because then Karolina seems to close in on herself again. Seems to shake off the softness around her eyes and put up the walls Nico’s used to again.

It’s no less than she deserves, Nico thinks. Even if it’s kind of fucked that she’s almost _trying_ to provoke this sort of response from Karolina.

“Right, well,” Karolina nods once more, her eyes cutting away from Nico to look at Ellie, her expression rearranging again – there’s so many versions of her that Nico can’t recognize anymore and this is one of them.

Is it grief? Sadness? Worry? Or, worse yet, resignation – maybe she thinks that it shouldn’t be Nico here either, but she’s just too nice to say anything.

“I should go, I guess.”

She’s still looking at Ellie when she says this and Nico’s not sure how to tell her that she can stay if she wants, or that Nico wants her to stay. That there was a reason that, despite everything, she was the first person Nico could think to call.

There aren’t words for that, she thinks. At least none that Nico has access to.

Karolina pauses at the edge of Ellie’s crib on her way out, brushing Nico’s shoulder as she slips between the back of her chair and the wall, her gaze lingering on Ellie’s sleeping form.

“You don’t –,” Nico starts, her mouth deciding on speaking before her mind can manage to gather the will to do so. Karolina looks at her, startled. _Shit_. “Uh – I just mean,” Nico stammers, backtracking and quieting and shrinking under hum of machinery, under the dim lighting, and, as always, under Karolina’s searching gaze. “I really do appreciate this,” she finishes lamely. “Thank you.”

“Oh. Of course.” She almost looks disappointed, even if something an awful lot like understanding chases the look away in the space of a breath. “If you need anything else, just let me know.”

When she leaves, it’s as she enters: quietly. But the space she leaves behind seems to only expand in the moments that follow, threatening to swallow Nico whole – she’s been alone before and she’ll be alone again, but right now it feels unfamiliar, unwelcoming. Unlike the usual loneliness that edges into Nico’s chest when she’s tired or particularly sad.

She waits some time before she reaches for the bag; it’s the reusable grocery bag that she left out on the kitchen counter as a visual reminder to go shopping today. It’s this ridiculous bright thing that she bought because it was on sale and because it felt familiar in some weird, distant way – it’s blue and pink and yellow, tie-dye, and there’s really no reason for it, but Nico’s heart twists at the sight of it.

It twists even more painfully when she pulls the bag into her lap and sees its contents.

Two facts are glaringly obvious:

  1. the hoodie Nico asked for is definitely the one that Karolina gave her for her seventeenth birthday and Nico kind of hates herself for not remembering that before asking for it. It’s gray and well-worn, with a small, fading decal of the full moon and a smattering of stars across the front and warm, still soft lining inside it despite the sheer amount of times Nico’s spilled beer on it and had to throw it in the wash. When everything fell to pieces, it was the only thing that Nico could bear to look at that reminded her of Karolina, if only because it was her favorite piece of clothing.



and

  1. Karolina was entirely too thoughtful. She grabbed Nico’s phone charger without being asked to, as well as a pair of socks that Nico’s pretty sure she left balled up on the couch from a few nights before, and it’s really all that Nico can do to not cry at the fact that Karolina seemed to remember how cold Nico’s feet tended to get. It’s stupid, really. It still hurts all the same.



The stupidest thing is that Nico hadn’t expected for this to come back to the surface so easily, had hoped that maybe there had been enough time away that it wouldn’t feel as fresh. Like – come _on._ Who could get over Karolina in as little as four years? Who could somehow stamp out the memory of being cared for by _Karolina Dean_ in anything less than an entire lifetime?

Really, Nico should have known better.

If Amy were here –

well. 

If Amy were here, Nico would probably go another five or so years before seeing Karolina at their ten-year reunion, because she _knows_ Chase wouldn’t be quite so willing to let her brush that off without a halfway decent excuse, of which Nico is fresh out of and probably will be for the foreseeable future. 

If Amy were here, Nico would just be getting into the shower before work tonight and would be cursing herself for not just sucking it up and getting groceries earlier in the week and everything would be _normal_ and Nico wouldn’t be fighting back the urge towards self-immolation in response to being forced to remember what an absolute and total _shitbag_ she can be sometimes.

And, as if the universe felt that maybe the whole _you’re a terrible person and everyone knows you’re going to screw this up and literally no one that knows you thinks that you should be in charge of an actual child_ message hadn’t been really driven in –

the door opens again and Nico doesn’t look up, already halfway to waving off the nurse or maybe Karolina again when the new visitor speaks.

“ _Nico_.”


	3. i'm an open book, but i'm missing pages

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> she doesn't forget it. but she doesn't exactly want to remember it either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow, i massively underestimated how truly fucked my sense of time gets around the holidays. honestly? we're all really lucky that i accidentally looked at a calendar today and realized it was friday lmao.
> 
> anyway. strap in, kiddos, i'm going to do my damnedest to make you all cry in the next three chapters or so
> 
> disclaimed

Nico hasn’t seen her mother in something like two years? Or three? Something like that, because somehow the words _if you leave, don’t expect to come back_ had that special ability to make it impossible to look one’s mother in the eyes without fighting back the deep-seated urge to flip a table or cry or both, maybe.

But it’s been years, ever since Nico switched programs in college. Her mother hasn’t changed her perfume, though – it’s still the same as when Nico was young and small and her mother sat beside her at the dining table, pointing out the extraneous comma in her book report or looking over her math homework for mistakes.

Nico smells her first, even before her mother’s voice is really recognized by her slowed, still sleep-hazy brain. She thinks she remembers reading somewhere that the sense of smell is one of the last things to go in coma patients? Maybe that has something to do with it. And for however brief a moment, Nico misses her mother so intensely it aches. She hasn't for a while – she's not even sure if she did right after her mother told her to leave or for anything longer than a blink in the years since. But for a moment, Nico smells her mother's perfume and remembers a time, years and years ago, when her family was whole and she _misses_ her mother.

The moment passes and eventually she turns to face the door fully, her brain waking up and reorienting away from old heartache, faded out at the edges, to the fresh hell of Tina Minoru.

“Mom,” Nico greets flatly, drawing in on herself. 

In her entire life, Nico’s never seen her mother look less composed than she does now – even when she was small and things were still good, when her mother wore her hair down and didn’t always seem quite so far away; even just after her father died, when it seemed like her mother stopped sleeping entirely, when it seemed like they were all one misstep away from the whole house just collapsing down around them. Even through all that, Nico’s never seen her like this.

Her dress is rumpled, her hair in disarray; Nico thinks that she probably got on the first plane she could when she heard the news and didn’t take time to change or even take her makeup off after bailing on the technology summit she was leading in Zurich. It’s the most human her mother has seemed in a long time.

It’s a little unreal to see – to watch as Tina Minoru seems to collapse in on herself as her eyes sweep across the small room, taking in Nico first, then Ellie in her crib; to see how her expression falters, then cracks and softens at the sight of her granddaughter. 

Nico doesn’t know how to broach this – if her mother knows. If she had assumed she would find Amy in Nico’s place, if anyone had told her, if it had been Dr. Aguilar and Jason, if she had seen Amy, if –

“Have they brought you Amy’s things?” her mother asks abruptly.

“Her – what?”

This would normally be where her mother would sigh and make a face, where she would frown at how Nico doesn’t seem to listen carefully enough or understand what she’s asking.

Rather than doing anything like what she normally would however, Tina’s shoulders just slump a little further as she steps into the room.

“Her personal effects,” her mother clarifies after a single, silent beat. “Anything that was recovered.”

Oh. 

Nico shakes her head – she’s pretty sure no one’s said anything to her about that. They would have when they offered to let her have a moment with Amy, right? She’s pretty sure someone would have.

Her mother nods shortly. “Right,” she says, her voice tight. “I’ll have to look into that, then.”

It’s weird – the last time they were in a room together, Nico and her mother were yelling at each other and, in the years since, Nico’s taken every late night, sleepless opportunity to plan out what it was that she would say if she ever faced Tina again.

But it’s all sort of just fallen away in the wake of Amy’s absence. It makes sense that it would – that the anger and the hurt that Nico has so carefully nursed in the years since her mother disowned her would fade to the background, would be dulled to the point of near non-existence in favor of the unity of grief. 

This is how it was in their house in those first awful months after her father died; all the issues that had started cropping up between Nico and Tina with increasing frequency were laid aside during those early days when it was all they could do to get up in the mornings. It makes sense now that they would do the same now that Amy, the family peacemaker, was gone too.

If Amy were here, Nico thinks again futilely, she’d be intervening and capitalizing on the fact that they weren’t yelling yet; she would be furtively trying to push them towards reconciliation. 

Even after Nico moved out, even after she and their mother stopped speaking – it was always Amy trying to bridge the gap. Nico knows that she was probably giving Tina updates on her life, dropped into conversation as casually as could be managed in much the same way as she was doing for Nico.

Hell, it was Amy that told her that their mother was leading the summit at all. In the years since sophomore year, Nico’s sort of trained herself to tune out whenever she spots _Minoru_ or _Wizard_ in a newspaper or on Twitter. If it weren’t for Amy, Nico was more than capable of pretending that her mother didn’t exist.

So it’s for Amy’s sake that Nico makes her offer: “I can call a nurse and see if we can get you a chair.”

There’s a moment when surprise, then disbelief registers across her mother’s face – it’s only fair, Nico thinks. If Tina had suddenly made a kind overture towards her after nearly five years, she’d be a little disbelieving too.

Her mother seems to deflate further – mortal, instead of superhuman. “I’d appreciate that,” she says, voice strained.

It’s just as Nico’s about to call that a new nurse bustles in, effectively ending the uncomfortable silence as her mother’s attention redirects to asking a series of rapid questions.

“Oh – ah,” the nurse frowns. “I’m sorry, you are…?”

“Ellie’s grandmother,” Tina tells her. “How seriously is her team considering the risks of a more severe brain bleed?”

It’s odd watching as her mother seems to grow in size again, straightening and rolling her shoulders back, her own grief or pain or _whatever_ set aside as she focuses wholly on this new task, this singular goal. Nico used to see it happen in her youth – her mother would be upset after an argument with her father, or maybe Nico’s grandmother had visited recently and exerted that pull she always held over Tina, or maybe Nico or Amy had pushed an argument further than normal. Her mother would falter, stumble in a rare show of vulnerability, before she found some new task to undertake and pulled herself together.

Because of the rarity of the act, it’s all the more jarring now. And all the more illuminating – Nico’s been here for _how long_? And she hadn’t once thought to ask Ellie’s medical team that?

The numbness that seems to wrap around Nico like a shroud tightens into a noose. She can’t care for Ellie – but she _has_ to. There isn’t another option here. _Nico_ was designated and _Nico_ signed the papers, so _Nico_ is the one that needs to figure out how to get less numb.

She listens to the nurse give what her mother must deem a satisfactory answer, if the lack of a follow up interrogation is anything to go by. The woman slips out quickly then, returning a moment later with an additional chair that she manages to wiggle through the doorway, leaving it beside Nico’s own chair before she conducts her checks on Ellie’s vitals.

“Everything’s looking strong,” the nurse hums, turning to the computer station to update Ellie’s chart. “One of the nurses will be in soon to check in on her pain management, but so far, so good.” And with one final thumbs up, Nico and her mother are left alone again.

The hum and rhythmic beeping of Ellie’s machinery and the muted sounds of floor nurses out in the hall are all that breaks the oppressive silence that settles over the room.

Because, like – what is Nico _supposed_ to say? It’s not as if they’re here by choice. It’s not like Nico has forgiven her mother and she’s _sure_ her mother hasn’t forgiven her. They’re here, in this room together, because they have to be. Because Amy is gone and they have to be here, trying to bridge the emptiness she’s left behind for the sake of Ellie.

It’s then that Nico thinks, traitorously, that maybe Ellie would be better off without them at all.

It sounds terrible. She knows that. But she also knows the weight of the Minoru name – Amy was the best of them, would have been able to mitigate the damage their family line tended to inflict on its children. Nico wouldn’t stand a chance.

“I’ll be making arrangements for the funeral as soon as possible,” her mother says abruptly, the edges of her mask coming into focus as she straightens in her seat. In that moment, she slides back into the persona of Tina Minoru without hesitation. “I take it you haven’t spoken with anyone regarding the remains?”

 _The remains_. As if there’s nothing left of Amy to reference, just _the remains_. 

“I came here from the ICU,” Nico answers listlessly. Her mother nods. “I haven’t really had a chance to do much of anything,” Nico adds. 

Tina stares at her.

“No,” Nico clarifies, struggling to keep the bite from her words. “I haven’t spoken to anyone.”

Her mother’s phone materializes seemingly from thin air – Nico realizes with a start that this might be the first time in nearly a decade that she can remember it _not_ being glued to her mother’s hand.

In the silence of the room, the muted taps of Tina sending off messages sound like drumbeats, thumping behind Nico’s tired eyes. “I suppose you also haven’t established a chain of command when it comes to Ellie’s care?” she asks, clearly expecting that she already knows the answer.

“No,” Nico says, narrowing her eyes as her mother rolls her own. “I haven’t had to–”

“I’ll look into–”

“–because I’m her guardian.”

“–it as soon as– _what?!_ ”

Tina’s expression would be comical, if Nico wasn’t feel so raw about this, about how it seems like Amy was literally the only person that knew her that thought Nico was capable of caring for Ellie.

“Amy named me Ellie’s guardian,” Nico says flatly, pressing back against the stiff chair backing just so that she can feel _something_. Anything to distract her form how small she feels under her mother’s gaze. “A social worker came by earlier to file the paperwork.”

“That’s ridiculous,” her mother huffs, though her voice wavers just the slightest. The tiniest hint of doubt. Nico watches as the doubt grows in the few seconds that lapse between them, until – “You’re serious?”

“Do you really think I’d bullshit this?”

Tina settles back in her seat in shock, lips pressed tightly together. So she doesn’t believe in Nico – what’s new?

In the absence of conversation, they both focus on Ellie in the crib between them.

Nico looks at her niece and is terrified – she’s not so full of herself to pretend like she knows what the fuck she’s doing. In fact, it’s sort of her brand to readily admit that she’s a fucking mess and that there’s a non-zero chance that she’ll forget to water the new philodendron she impulse-bought at the farmer’s market.

But the way she views it is this: Ellie’s alone now. Not entirely, because Nico knows that Tina loves her granddaughter fiercely and purely, in a way she wasn’t always able to for her own daughters. She also knows that that love isn’t necessarily enough to keep her mother from doing unto Ellie the same damage that she did to Nico, that it won’t keep her from applying the same pressure in hopes of molding Ellie into a replica of herself. These facts can coexist – it took a shitton of therapy to be able to admit that.

Nico also knows that her and Amy’s old friends – the whole gang – would step up in an instant if Nico backed out. Gert and Chase would raise Ellie into a little lacrosse loving, frontline marching advocate if they were asked to take her; Alex would fumble, but do his best. Even Molly, Nico knows, would bend over backwards to give Ellie the childhood she deserves.

And Karolina –

well, Nico can’t think about Karolina too much right now. Not yet.

So Ellie’s not entirely alone. She has so many people that love her, that would care for her as if she were their own, that would raise her and protect Amy’s legacy in her life.

But none of them could share with her what Nico knows, what stories she carries close to her heart of Amy sneaking into her room after bedtime and reading Harry Potter together with a flashlight under Nico’s covers. None of them – not even Tina, Nico thinks – could assure Ellie, when she’s older, that it’s okay if she bombs a math test, because Nico once helped Amy hide three consecutive Ds in AP Environmental Science and then stayed up one night to help her study for the next quiz.

None of them knew Amy the way Nico did, she thinks. Maybe she fell a little out of the loop as they got older, as Amy eased more and more into the role of golden child and Nico stumbled her way into being the black sheep, but no one could hold a candle to the veritable archive of memories Nico has of her sister.

Nico’s not naïve enough to believe that Amy picked her as Ellie’s guardian because she’s the perfect parent in training or that she’s the best prepared to take on a child right now. But she does know how terrified Amy was of pushing her child in the way Tina pushed them, or in being too distant, or of keeping so many secrets like their father did. And she’s pretty sure she knows how to avoid those same pitfalls.

Nico looks at Ellie and makes a decision.

 _Okay_ , she thinks. _I have to try._

The fear is still there; Nico’s fairly certain that fear is half of what parenting is, so she’s not wholly uncomfortable with the sense she has that that same fear will never truly leave her now that it’s made a home in her chest. But there’s something new, too – determination to do her best by Ellie, to do right by her sister. A promise to give herself entirely to this.

Okay.

**. . .**

After Nico’s father died, she’d sometimes wondered if the universe had just _massively_ fucked up somehow. If she had been the one to actually die and if what followed – the numbness, the hollowness, the feeling like she was just drifting through the world, going through the motions, emptied out – had been the punishment she was to endure as penance for every cruel thing she’d ever thought or said or done. Her father had loved his life and his family and his work – or so Nico had thought at the time – so it just didn’t make sense that he was the one that they buried.

It feels the same now, only not. Nico drifts through the PICU halls when the chair in Ellie’s room starts to leave an ache in her hip; she drifts home every few days to shower and collect her mail; she drifts into work once to numbly explain the situation to her sympathetic manager. 

The difference comes here: most days, she sits at Ellie’s bedside. Her mother still hovers, but Nico begins preemptively asking the medical staff about Ellie’s prognosis, a thousand different things Googled, terms highlighted so that she knows the right questions to ask, the right things to listen for. 

The difference is that this time Nico wallows in her grief but only in the small moments she’s alone – the walk from the bus stop to the hospital, or in the ten minutes she risks to shower, when the water drowns out every other thought in her head. This time, Nico has something to focus on, something more important and tangible than anything in her life had been when she was fourteen or seventeen or nineteen.

Someone from the old group stops by at least once a day, slipping in quietly to see Ellie for themselves, to be assured by her continued existence. Some of them – mainly Gert, but Nico’s seen messages from just about everyone – text Nico ahead of time, checking if she needs anything or _if now isn’t a great time to swing by?_

One day – day four, Nico thinks – she opens up the old thread with Karolina. She needs to thank her, she’d decided one late night. Karolina went out of her way to help Nico on one of the worst days of her life despite everything that had happened between them and, even if they’re never meant to really be close again, she should at least acknowledge how much it had helped to not have to leave Ellie’s bedside on that first, awful day.

Except.

Except, well, when she opens the thread, there are three dots staring back at Nico, right below the last text Karolina ever sent her.

Except that, almost as soon as Nico opens the thread, the dots disappear.

Except that now, unfortunately, Nico can’t stop thinking about that.

Any other day and she wouldn’t have cared (or so she tells herself), but Nico’s found that sitting vigil at a mostly-comatose infant’s bedside leaves far too much room for thinking, especially since it still doesn’t feel really real that she’s now in charge of said mostly-comatose infant.

Time passes slowly between visits and texts, uncomfortable conversations with her mother and bad TV reruns. It gives Nico too much leeway, too much lateral space in her brain to fill up with stupid thoughts.

Stupid thoughts like what her life would look like now if she’d been just a little better when she was younger – if she’d learned how to talk about her feelings or apologize in any way that mattered.

Or, even worse, her mind wanders to legitimate questions, like how she’s going to afford a car or a new place to live, or if she’ll be able to swing keeping Ellie at the bougie daycare Amy had her at, or what the career prospects are for someone with half a degree and a newly acquired baby. At least the stupid questions are ones that Nico can talk circles around.

On day six, the medical team informs Nico that they’ll be easing back Ellie’s pain medication, now that the worst of the swelling has gone down.

“We’re trying to keep serious medication to a minimum as much as possible,” Zara explains gently as she checks Ellie’s vitals. “Of course, if she’s in extreme pain, we’ll revisit the dosage, but we’re obviously worried about possible dependency issues.”

Babies can get hooked on opiates? Color Nico surprised.

She jots down the note – _ask re: dependency issues_ – on the running list she keeps on her phone, all things she wants to look up later or thinks she should follow up with Ellie’s pediatrician about.

Wait – Nico should find out who Ellie’s pediatrician is sooner rather than later.

She adds that to the list as well.

“Do you have any other questions?” Zara asks, startling Nico slightly.

“Oh, uh –,” Nico scrolls up to the top of the list. “Yeah, actually. Do you have any idea of a timeline for her recovery?”

That’s the first question, one that Nico’s been staring at since that first day, too afraid to ask and hear an answer that’ll only make that numbness grow within her. What if they tell her that there is no timeline? What if they tell her there is no recovery, only maintenance? What then?

“Physically, we’re looking at weeks to months, depending on how well she does down the road with fine and gross motor skills. The fractures themselves will heal in a few weeks, but we’re a little concerned with how close that leg break is to her growth plate.” Zara adjusts one of the electrode wires away from Ellie’s curled fist and continues, “But that’s something fairly easy to address if necessary. In terms of her cognitive development, that’s more of a wait and see sort of thing.”

“What does that mean?”

Nico thinks it’s a good thing that it’s Zara that’s answering these questions, the ones that make Nico feel entirely out of her depth. Zara’s been the main nurse on Ellie’s team, a familiar face – Nico’s not sure she’d have worked up the courage to finally ask otherwise.

“Because of the concussion and subsequent prolonged swelling, we’re just not sure right now what the future will look like for Ellie, developmentally speaking. Whether she hits her milestones, if she’ll have any difficulties as she gets older – that’s all still to be determined.”

Nico must look terrified (and rightfully so, she thinks, in the face of uncertainty), because Zara softens, her face twisting up in sympathy.

“I know it sounds daunting. I can have a pediatric neurologist come through to talk to you more about what the future may look like, if you’d like?”

A _neurologist_ – that’s, like, a Big Person doctor. That’s not a doctor that babies should have to see, not after something like this, not after being orphaned.

“That’d be good, I think,” Nico says hollowly. “Thank you.”

In a few moments, she’s alone again – just her and Ellie in a small hospital room, the lights low and the air still.

It’s in these quiet moments that Nico’s hit with the enormity of what she’s doing. In between visits and research, when there’s nothing else focus on except Ellie or her own breathing, Nico’s faced with how monumentally underprepared she is to raise this child. 

And Ellie’s just a baby! Nico so badly wants to be able to just ask her if she thinks Nico can do a good job or if she even wants to stay with Nico, but that’s not an option. And her other instinct – to call Amy and get her opinion – sends a sharp and hot lance of pain through Nico’s chest every time she thinks about it, brings her a little too close to the overflowing box she’s shoved her grief into.

She said she would try, for Amy and for her sake and Ellie’s, and she _is_ trying, but with every calculated question from her mother, every well-meaning check-in from the old group or her manager or coworkers – Nico’s growing more and more sure of the fact that she’s completely out of her depth.

That feeling only intensifies as they ease into day seven. Ellie has, for the most part, slept through her stay in the hospital. The few times she was awake, she was sleepy and slow to respond to stimuli, which the medical team assured Nico was to be expected for the level of trauma and medication. But with less heavy medication weighing her down, Ellie starts to perk up a bit.

Which means that Ellie starts to cry. A lot.

Nico startles awake sometime deep in the night, her back and neck stiff from being slumped over in the chair beside Ellie’s crib, and her eyes dart around the room to find the source of whatever woke her up. After a bleary moment, her gaze falls on her niece.

Red faced and wailing, Ellie has big fat tears streaking down her cheeks. She looks to Nico with this pitiful little hiccup and, as if drawn forward by an invisible string, Nico stands and moves closer, hands hovering uselessly as she realizes she has exactly _zero_ clue on how to calm Ellie.

“Oh, Ellie.” Her voice sounds weak to her own ears, betraying just how entirely helpless Nico feels in the moment. 

She’s not sure what to do here – not sure where to touch that won’t hurt her niece further, not sure what to say to soothe her, not sure whether she’s crying from pain or hunger or if maybe she just wants her mother, wondering where Amy is and expressing it in the only way she can.

“I’m sorry,” Nico says, the apology catching in her throat. “I’m sorry.” She reaches down haltingly, wiping Ellie’s tears with a gentle touch. “I don’t – I don’t know – !”

The door cracks open just a bit, one of the night nurses popping his head in. “Everything alright in here?” he asks, eyes sweeping over the scene. “None of her monitors were going, but I heard crying.”

Nico’s face heats and she gestures helplessly to Ellie, struggling to put it into words. “I wasn’t sure if I should – if I _could_ pick her up or…” she finally manages, trailing off and feeling a little of the knot of tension in her chest loosen when the nurse steps in fully, taking control of the situation.

“She shouldn’t be hungry again,” the nurse murmurs aloud as he checks her chart. “And she was changed just an hour ago.” He moves up closer, sliding into the space that Nico makes for him as she steps away. “What’s going on, sweetheart?” he asks Ellie soothingly. “Are you in pain or just wanting some cuddles?”

He gently examines her, moving in a practiced pattern that Nico’s begun to recognize over the last week.

“Alright,” he says after a few quieter moments, Ellie’s sobs reduced to whimpers under his care. “She does seem to be in a bit more pain, but we’re going to try some non-pharmacological pain management before we reintroduce any of the heavy hitters. Sound okay?”

It takes a long beat for Nico to realize he’s asking a question that she’s supposed to answer, the disconnect in her brain between guardian and caregiver still extremely real.

“Oh,” she says, straightening up. “Yes. That – yeah, but what – ?” she stammers, hovering uselessly. “What exactly are her options if we’re avoiding medication?”

The nurse – Shane, his tag reads – is methodically gathering up wires and cords, unclipping them from the rail of the cot. “Honestly? Little guys like her get a whole lot out of just being held.” Gathering Ellie up into his arms, he glances at the chair at her bedside significantly and Nico abruptly realizes what her role in this situation should be.

“Oh! Right,” she breathes, quickly settling into the chair. “Would it – ?” Obviously, it’s safe to do – Shane, a medical professional, wouldn’t have suggested it otherwise, right? But still, Nico hesitates.

Ellie starts fussing again, squirming uncomfortably in Shane’s arms, her little face pinched in pain – it’s an easy choice, looking at that face, thinking about how much Amy must have trusted her to care for her child. Nico eases back in her seat and opens her arms to her niece.

Almost immediately, Ellie quiets, settling against Nico, her head resting on her chest. Shane helps Nico recline the chair, shifting their combined weight and redistributing it carefully.

“That’s what I thought,” Shane says gently, half to Ellie and half to Nico. “Someone just wanted some cuddles.” He helps adjust some of Ellie’s equipment around them and lays a blanket over Ellie’s back and Nico’s legs. “We’ll reassess her pain management when we start our rounds, alright? See how this does for her for a bit. But if she starts up again or anything drastically changes, we’ll get Doctor Zhang in to take a look, okay?”

Nico nods mutely, unsure of what to say or do, unsure, even, of where to put her hands. She remembers the last time she held Ellie, how the little girl screamed and screamed until a lovingly exasperated Amy had taken her back from a clueless and terrified Nico – she feels just as clueless and scared now, but now there’s no Amy to turn to for answers.

She’s dimly aware of Shane leaving the room, the door easing almost closed behind him, and of the steady beeping of Ellie’s monitors. But for the most part, Nico’s focus is sharply narrowed to the baby on her chest.

**. . .**

It’s more than a week before Amy’s funeral – Nico’s not the best at keeping track of time without a regular work schedule to keep her accountable, but she’s fairly certain that’s the timeframe under which Tina makes the arrangements.

And it’s like – she knows what day the funeral is on. Her mother sent her the calendar invitation once the arrangements were made, and Nico’s read the obituary twenty-six times; the first ten times were in hope of making the words less true somehow, and all the following times because by the time the words had really stuck, Nico had already made it a habit to read over the passage.

She can’t claim she forgot; she’s fairly certain that no one that knows her would believe it, considering how well established it is that Amy is – _was_ sort of the most important person in Nico’s life.

So she doesn’t forget it. But she doesn’t exactly want to remember it, either.

The night before the funeral, Nico sits on her bed and stares into the gaping maw of her closet – she has no shortage of black to wear, but none of it seems appropriate. She can’t quite remember the last time she wore a dress – fourteen? For her father’s funeral, maybe, or prom at seventeen – and the majority of the things in her closet are variations of band shirts, work clothes, and the odd collection of what she calls loungewear which is, in reality, clothes that past hookups and flings forgot at her place and were too comfy to consider returning.

And this, right now, is the longest she’s been away from the hospital, away from Ellie. Once she really started waking up, started responding to more stimuli, some of the anxiety about her immediate safety lessened for Nico, some of the tightness in her chest easing now that her care team had started to transition to talking about long term plans, rather than short term contingencies.

Even still, it’s odd to be away from her, even after such a short time of being around her. Each out of turn creak from the apartment sends Nico’s pulse racing, sets her nerves on edge expecting something new and terrible to happen.

Well. She supposes something new and terrible _is_ about to happen.

Tomorrow is her sister’s funeral, and the day after that or, maybe, the day after that, Nico’s supposed to bring Ellie home.

Home – home to what? Home to a shitty apartment that’s barely enough space for Nico, let alone for Nico _and a baby?_

She looks around the small space of her apartment, dragging her eyes away from the shifting mass of shadows that seems to be her closet. Her door remains unfixed, her laundry still undone. The last time Nico came home, she’d apparently had the clarity of mind to run the dishwasher, so there’s at least that chore done. But aside from the Pack-n-Play that Amy left at her place _months_ ago on the off chance she needed Nico to babysit last minute, she’s exactly zero percent prepared for anyone other than her to live here.

And long term – well, what the fuck is the long term supposed to look like? Nico’s got a little bit in savings, which is probably what’s going to cover the rest of her rent this month, considering she’s missed a solid week and a half of shifts and it’s really only some small miracle that she hasn’t gotten fired yet because of it. 

But after rent and utilities, restocking her fridge, doing all of her laundry – Nico won’t have much left over, and she’s not sure when she can go back to work, or _if_ she can go back to work. How much would a sitter run for nights? Nico’s pretty sure there aren’t any graveyard shift daycare places.

Tina kept talking around the point every time she visited the hospital, kept dropping passive aggressive hints at how terribly underprepared Nico was to care for Ellie – _“Well, I’m sure you’ll figure_ something _out_ ,” she said when Nico made the mistake of answering her manager’s call in front of her – and Nico knows that she’s planning something, calculations clear in her eyes every time they’ve seen each other since Nico told her about Amy’s decision.

And Nico can’t even really blame her for it. She knows the optics of the whole situation, sees how much more easily Tina could rearrange her life to take on Ellie. Her mother isn’t young necessarily, but she’s not so old that suddenly raising a baby would put her out, and where her own energy may fail her, her money can bankroll an entire army of nannies that could step in.

Every time Nico thinks of that, though, she remembers the weight of Ellie dozing on her chest, still upset but soothed even a little bit by Nico’s presence and touch. A caretaker is a caretaker, Nico knows that – Ellie doesn’t even really know Nico and has only started sort of recognizing her in the last day or so – but the thought of letting Tina hand her off to an endless rotation of au pairs and nannies is unfathomable.

Nico – Nico doesn’t have a lot worth fighting for in her life. She burned just about every connection she had from her childhood years ago, made it so that there’s an unnamable tension between her and her old friends whenever they’re around each other, and she’s made it a point to never really let anyone else close enough to see past her carefully constructed front since then. 

Amy was the last, she thinks. The only since everything went down. And Ellie – Ellie is a little part of Amy, entrusted to Nico, and Nico remembers her sister helping her haul her few possessions up the stairs to this very apartment when she moved in, remembers her calling in sick the day after Nico had called her, drunk and crying at some shitty dive bar, so that she could care for her during the _worst_ hangover Nico’s ever experienced.

She remembers Amy clutching her hand at their father’s grave, watching the casket sink into the ground before them and how it felt like Amy’s hand was the only thing keeping Nico from collapsing at the sight.

And she can’t – Nico can’t give her up. Maybe it’s selfish, trying to bring a child that was very much meant for a life of relative comfort into what is probably going to be at _least_ a couple very stressful years, but Nico can’t fathom handing Ellie over to anyone else. Not when she has Amy’s eyes.

Nico’s breath hitches in her chest, her own eyes shutting on instinct, but the tears never come – the ache in her ribs only grows and grows, her breathing growing shaky in response.

It might be better if she does cry, Nico thinks. She hasn’t in the days since the accident, not once, but the pain is always there – sometimes a numbness that makes her limbs leaden, sometimes a sharp, hot pain in her chest that makes it hard to catch her breath. All this hurt, with nowhere to go.

Two things happen at once, then.

Nico’s phone rings, buzzing against her thigh on the bed, and someone knocks insistently on her door.

More shocked by the surprise visitor – what is it, nine at night? Is it night? – Nico answers her phone blindly, not pausing to check the caller ID as she turns to grab her bat.

“ _– told them you’d probably want some space, but Gert’s been really –_.”

It takes a few seconds for Nico’s brain to process what she’s hearing, shock stopping her movements.

“– _and you haven’t been answering texts, so we –._ ”

“Chase?”

Chase lets out a breath. “ _Hey._ ”

“Is – are you – ?”

“ _It’s Gert and Molly at your door, I’m parking. I just – I figured you’d want a heads up before we completely descend upon you._ ”

“What are you – why are you guys here? _How_ are you guys here?”

 _“Molly got your address off Karolina and Gert – I mean,_ we _mutually decided to pitch in to get thing ready. Stacey said Ellie is supposed to come home soon?”_

“Yeah – uh. In the next few days. But –?”

Gert knocks again, harder this time.

 _“Listen – we, uh. We know how hard this must be for you. If you – if you want us to leave, I can call Gert right now and we’ll get out of your hair,”_ Chase offers, sighing. _“You know, this was a bad idea –.”_

“No!” Nico startles herself out of her shock with the force of her refusal, the idea of being alone in her apartment any longer suddenly turning her stomach. “No, no, I don’t –.” Nico sucks in a shaky breath. “I could – I could use some help.”

It’s ridiculous, really, how hard it is to force out those words – they feel like they were pried out of Nico’s throat, inch by bitter inch. But it’s true, isn’t it? She can’t even find something to wear to her own sister’s funeral – that’s someone that needs help. 

And it’s as if once the words are out, no longer taking up space between Nico’s teeth, it’s easy enough to cross her living room and open the door. Gert and Molly’s arms are full of bags – Nico spies the covered top of a casserole – and Molly grins at her over the top of her armful.

“Can we come in?” Molly asks, rocking up on the balls of her feet. “Gert gave me all the heavy stuff to carry.”

Gert huffs in irritation, hip checking her sister. “Don’t lie – you volunteered to take them,” she grumbles, before turning her attention back to Nico. “Chase is on his way up,” she tells her. “We thought we could help get things ready for Ellie to come home?”

“That would, uh –,” Nico swallows hard against the lump in her throat. “I would appreciate that. A lot.”

She steps out of the way to let them in, halfway to closing the door when Chase darts around the corner of her hallway and waves.

“Hey Nico,” he greets, offering her a small, charming smile as Nico opens the door back up for him. “Nothing on fire yet?”

Nico shakes her head – in the past, she’d have offered at least a polite laugh at his obvious attempt to dispel some tension, but it’s just so _awkward_ now. Having these people that she used to think of like family in a space they’ve never seen her in before, near strangers in a space that she’s made her own in the years away from them – it’s nerve-wracking. Nico can’t figure out what to make of it, but she’s fairly certain she doesn’t love the feeling.

She tries to remember how this would have gone in the past. They all used to hang out together, right? Used to spend nearly every Friday night together in Alex’s pool house, used to play dorky board games until one by one, they fell asleep sprawled over one another. Nico tries to remember the casual intimacy, how easy it was to let people – _these_ people, in particular – close to her. How it wasn’t always just her and Amy, no matter how it might have felt once they went home.

These people – they loved Amy too.

So when Gert turns to Nico after setting down her bags and asks, “Where should we start?” – Nico tamps down the immediate urge to kick them all back out, to reclaim to carefully cultivated sense of independence. 

Instead, she looks around at the mess of her apartment, assessing everything as she slips into something a little safer, something a little more numbed to the steady pulse of pain she’s felt ever since that day in the hospital – her eyes settle on her fucked up door, leaning up against the wall beneath her bedroom window.

“How good are you guys with repairs?”

**Author's Note:**

> hello! just a quick note: the posting schedule is going to roughly be once a week, but i'm also in my final year of university and so that may get pushed to once every two weeks. my goal is to have this wrapped up by may and the total chapter count is tbd at the moment, so we'll see how it shakes out. thank you for reading!


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